


Not Our Last Embrace

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Community: got_exchange, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For averita, from the last round of got_exchange.</p>
<p>Prompt: This is not the last snowfall/not our last embrace/but if I were that kind of grateful/what would I try to say?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Our Last Embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [averita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/averita/gifts).



There was always something special about coming home.

Ned Stark had spent most of his youth in the Eyrie, and he certainly would never lose his fondness for the Vale or the aching nostalgia that tore at his heart when he thought back on his boyhood. But he was a Stark of Winterfell. Winter was always in his blood, and Winterfell would always be home. And now, and for several years that had passed too quickly, there waited in it a lady with long red hair and shining blue eyes, a lady who still seemed, sometimes, to be out of place in Winterfell but whose smile always felt just as much like home. And though Lord Stark was always most glad to return to his ancestral castle, the tug at his heart when he saw that smile had long assured him that Ned was most glad to return to Catelyn.

She was smiling at him now, her windswept hair dusted with summer snowflakes, her cheeks made pink by the chill and the gust, her hand resting on the shoulder of the small boy who looked desperately proud to be there to greet him.

“Welcome home, Lord Stark!” Robb said, a little too quickly and a little too loudly, the gap where his front teeth used to be marring his attempt to pronounce his family name. Ned checked his grin and met his son with a grave smile instead.

“Thank you, son,” he replied, accepting the boy’s bow as solemnly as he could manage. “Did you look well after your mother and your sisters while I was gone?” Robb nodded vigorously in return.

“I tried to teach Arya to say my name, but she still can’t.”

“She’ll learn in time.”

“And Sansa sewed a new dress for her doll. It’s blue, and Septa says she did a really good job but it doesn’t look like a good job to me. I told her it did, though.”

“Sansa is only four years of age. It will be a long time before she can sew as well as Septa Mordane or your mother, but it was good of you to encourage her.”

“And Mother is sick,” Robb continued, casually, “so I don’t bother her unless it’s very important.” Ned looked swiftly to Catelyn at his son’s words. Other than the flushed cheeks, she did not appear to be in poor health, but he knew all too well that he was no expert.

“My lady,” he said carefully. “Are you ill?” She looked down, her smile faltering slightly.

“I am fine, my lord. I am glad to have you home again.”

“Catelyn,” he pressed, and her response was sharper.

“Ned. I am fine. Let us go inside now. You must be tired.” Her tone was firm and assured, but still some of the sweetness was gone from Ned’s homecoming as he worried about that which his wife was not telling him. Offering her his arm, and Robb his other hand, he walked back into the keep working hard to withhold the concern from his face.

As soon as they were inside the castle, both the Stark daughters rushed to greet their father, Sansa approaching in a preternaturally ladylike fashion and Arya running even though she had barely learned to walk. Noticing, Catelyn pulled away with a smile, letting Ned hug the girls who had missed their father.

He was happy to see them, of course, and to discover that even if Arya could not yet say “Robb” she had not forgotten “Papa” in his absence. Sansa’s doll, he noticed, wore a dress of Tully blue, surely made from a scrap of Catelyn’s and just as surely better sewn than anything Ned could have done himself. Yet even as he held his daughters, marveling at how quickly they’d grown from squalling babes to little girls with such distinct personalities of their own, he could not stop thinking of his son’s offhand comment. He’d said it so freely, so easily that Ned knew there could not be any deceit in it.

Catelyn was sick. Worse, Catelyn was sick and she did not want him to know. Surely had she come down with something as mundane as a cold, she would have mentioned it – downplaying her discomfort, of course, as she always did, but at least explaining what was the matter. The fact that she was withholding her illness could only mean that it was serious. Ned tried not to panic, but he could not help remembering how it felt to lose his father – his brother – his sister…and as much as it shamed him to admit, even in his own head, he had not loved any of them as he did his wife.

He could not bear to lose Catelyn, he thought, as he carefully extracted himself from his daughters’ embrace, begging the need to have a bath and change out of his riding clothes. With his parents, and Brandon, dead, and Lyanna, missing, it had been his pretty Tully bride who had gravely promised to give him a family – and when Benjen had left for the Night’s Watch, it had been his beloved wife and the beautiful family she had given him that took the sting out of being the last of his siblings to live in Winterfell. The thought of coming home and not seeing Cat there, waiting for him, was agony, and he was struck by a desperate desire to hold her close, never to let her go, as if his embrace had the power to ward off illness, to ward off death, even though he’d had it proven too many times that it did not. But he had not lied when he told his girls that he needed to clean up, and so he headed towards his own chambers, stopping briefly to hug Jon and say hello to Theon as he passed their rooms.

As he lay in the tub, carefully washing out weeks’ worth of dirt and grime, he knew that he would have to bear it, somehow. He could not shirk his duty to his children, to his land, to his people. He would have to keep from falling apart, somehow, if for no other reason than to try to teach Robb to be the just Lord of Winterfell that he himself struggled so hard to be. But the idea of a life without Catelyn tore painfully at his heart, and not for the first time he found himself wishing it were easier for him to cry.

_It is not fair_ , he thought, and immediately berated himself for it. He had been given more than most men even dreamed of having – wealth and power, of course, and moreover his healthy, perfect children and the beautiful wife whom he loved beyond reason – so how could he question the gods’ fairness in taking anything away? Who was he to complain of losing the mother of his three beautiful trueborn children when Jon Arryn had buried two wives without even the comfort of one child? And were not eight years of marriage with Catelyn worth more than a lifetime married to the Lannister woman? Before they were married, Ned had scarcely dreamed of the love he now had for his lady wife, and now he knew it – he felt it – he lived with it every day, and even with the pain of impending loss gripping at him, he knew that he ought to be endlessly grateful for having been granted these years, this love, with her.

Suddenly, Ned was seized by an urge to tell his wife everything that she meant to him. It was not new; these urges came upon him from time to time and had been since the first moment he looked into her blue eyes and saw more than kindness staring back at him. But it was hard to put his love to words, and with Catelyn as robust and healthy as she’d always been, he’d been able to content himself that she knew without his speaking. Now, though…if their days together were numbered, he could not wait. If Cat died without hearing him say that he loved her more than life, he would not be able to live through years without her, and so he would have to find a way to say it.

Though his bath was not yet tepid, he rushed out of it and hastened to dress himself. He could not wait any longer, and it was only partly because he was afraid of losing his nerve. She had to know, as soon as possible, and time seemed to pass so much more quickly when years were no longer assured to him. Finishing, he rushed out of his rooms and toward hers, his heart sinking when he found them empty.

“Have you seen Lady Stark?” he asked a passing serving girl, as politely as he could manage. The girl nodded briefly.

“She left just a moment ago, said she was a bit warm and needed some fresh air. I expect you’ll find her just outside the castle, my lord, if you’re looking for her.” Ned nodded his thanks and rushed off again, even surer by now that there was something wrong with Catelyn. Even summer in the North was cooler than she liked, and to hear she found her rooms too warm and preferred to be where it was snowing –

He could only move faster now, more desperate each moment to have her in his arms.

“Catelyn!” he called, stepping out onto the grounds and catching her in view. She turned, and he was struck anew by her beauty: The graceful curve of her cheek, the brightness of her eyes, the warmth of the auburn hair that he so loved to see spread out against his pillow. She was so endlessly lovely, and yet it was the least of the reasons why he loved her, and his heart ached again at the thought that their time together could not last forever.

“What is it, my lord?” she asked, startled, as she turned to walk toward him. He met her halfway and caught her in his arms, looking down into her face, breathing her in and wishing time would slow down so that he could have this moment for the rest of his life.

“Catelyn,” he said, a bit haltingly, as he tightened his arm about her waist. “You know that I love you, my lady.” Ned meant his words to be a statement, but somehow he could not keep his voice from rising at the end.

“Of course I do,” she replied, surprised. “As I love you.”

“And for these eight years you have been a wife of whom any man might be proud. Whom any man might want.” He paused. “The only wife I want.”

“Well, that is certainly a reassurance,” Cat answered with a slight smile, “as I am the only wife you have, and intend to remain that way.” Ned did not smile in return, however – it seemed the words came easier if he pressed on.

“I was so frightened the day we married. I knew I was not what you expected, not what you wanted. I did not know if I would ever be happy with you, and I knew you would never be happy with me.” He paused again, a hint of pleading breaking into his tone. “But you have been, haven’t you, Cat? You have been glad to be my wife? Because nothing has ever made me gladder than to be your husband and the father of your children.” Catelyn’s expression softened, and her eyes were wet.

“Ned,” she said softly, her voice trembling. “You know I have. Being your wife has brought me more joy than I ever hoped for, even as a girl. Even when I thought I would marry Brandon.” She looked up into his face and reached her hand to stroke his cheek. “I love you very much.” Catelyn rose on her toes to punctuate her assurance with a soft kiss on his mouth, and when she broke away her speech was steadier.

“But what is this all about, Ned? You have not been gone _that_ long. Have you really missed me so much?”

“I am worried for you,” Ned finally admitted. “You are ill, and afraid to tell me of it. I would not want to miss the chance to tell you how much you have meant to me. How much you will always mean to me.” She frowned.

“It is not that I am anything but glad to hear it, my love, but I am not ill. I told you – I am fine.”

“Robb said you have been sick,” he reminded her stubbornly. “He would not lie.”

“No, he would not,” she agreed, a smile slowly spreading over her face. “But he is a little boy, and he does not always know what he thinks he does. I have been feeling unwell recently, but I am not ill, and it will pass, and you will have many opportunities to tell me that you love me. That you love _us_. Ned. I am expecting a babe.” Ned’s eyes widened in response, and he, too, began to smile.

“You are with child?” Cat nodded.

“It is very early,” she cautioned, “and so I have not spoken of it except with those people who need to know, among whom is _not_ our seven-year-old son. But yes, my lord. Be assured you have a healthy wife and soon shall have another child.” Ned bent towards her, kissing her fiercely and pulling her close even as the snow fell faster.

“There is nothing more that the gods could give me,” he whispered in her ear as they embraced. “I daresay I have all a man could want.”


End file.
